The last few years, I’ve been living out a different kind of travel.  Instead of hopping from one beautiful trail in a fantastic park to a different awesome trail in a different amazing park, I’ve been spending nearly the entirety of my trips in only one or two parks.  For example, in 2019 I spent nearly two weeks in Glacier National Park and nearby Cabinet Mountains Wilderness; last year, despite my best plans, we ended up spending two entire weeks in Death Valley National Park (with a couple field trips over to the Alabama Hills for the fun of it).

There’s a big difference between visiting a park to hike one or two trails and hanging out there for two weeks.  For one thing, you start to notice the same peaks and features from different vantage points.  Then you start to notice the similarities and differences in the flora, fauna, and geology around you.  The visit becomes an experience of learning a new place intimately instead of having only a brief glance.

Too many times, we find ourselves visiting with Jesus.  We go to church and have an experience with Him – that’s a great thing and it can build our faith.  Or we hear an awesome song on the radio and it just connects us to Him.  That’s great, too.  But if we only visit with Him occasionally, it’s no more in depth than running into a national park, hiking one trail, and then racing to another park saying that we “visited” that park.

There’s nothing wrong with just visiting.  But you will never get to know a park by visiting occasionally.  You’ve got to live there, experience it, go beyond the most famous of the trails into the rustic wilds of the place to really know it.

It’s the same with our relationship with God.  We’ll never get to truly know Him just by visiting occasionally.  We’ve got to actually live with him – go beyond the external experience to the wilds of Who He is in the different seasons and dimensions of His heart – to truly know Him.

Glacier National Park looks very different in January than it does in July.  Yosemite Falls is a totally different place in April than in September.  Unless we’ve stayed through the seasons, we’ll never get to know the true character of a national park.  And if we’ve stayed close to God throughout the seasons of the soul, we will learn more about God’s heart, the way He sees things, and the ways that we can be more like Him.